Kite

How to spell kite

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce kite

What does kite mean?

1. nounA light frame covered in paper or fabric that is flown in the wind on a long string.
2. nounA slender bird of prey in the hawk family, known for hovering and gliding on long wings.
3. nounA four-sided shape with two pairs of equal adjacent sides.

Kite in a sentence

• The children flew a bright red kite on the windy beach.

• A red kite circled high above the motorway, scanning for prey.

• The pupils calculated the area of a kite in their geometry homework.

• A sudden gust tore the kite free of its string.

• Conservationists reintroduced the kite to the valley after decades.

• A kite has two pairs of equal sides that meet at a point.

Where does kite come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Kite comes from the Old English word cyta, the name of a graceful, hovering bird of prey in the hawk family. The name probably imitated the bird's high, plaintive cry, and related forms appear across the older Germanic languages. For centuries the word meant only the bird, which was once a common scavenger over English towns. By the middle of the 1600s people began using the same name for the light, paper-covered frame flown on a string, because the way it hangs and wheels in the wind so strongly recalls the soaring of the bird. The word kept its plain four-letter spelling throughout, with the silent final -e simply marking the long vowel, which is why the trap for adults is mishearing the vowel rather than the letters themselves.

How the word is built

• kite (single root from Old English cyta, a bird of prey); no affixes